Conventional home automation systems have been available in the marketplace for many years. For example, the internationally-known X10 standard was one of the first standards commercialized for automating systems within a home, office, or school. The X10 standard enables commands to be sent over the existing wiring in a structure, so that a controller can send messages to a controlled device. That is, one or more devices may communicate with one another over existing electrical wiring using the X10 standard. Controllers and controlled devices can be paired by manually setting the address or identifying information on the respective devices.
Recent efforts to conserve energy have sparked additional interest in home automation. The existing and available solutions in the prior art, however, require large expenditures of capital and/or expert domain knowledge to facilitate installation. The current known prior art solutions are further limited by the fact that conventional outlets function in the same way regardless of the load (e.g., the particular electrical device) operably coupled to the outlet. In other words, a conventional outlet functions exactly the same regardless of whether a refrigerator, a clock radio, an incandescent light, a vacuum cleaner, a life support device, or another electrical device is plugged into the outlet. Such inflexible and non-discriminatory outlet set-up is not cost efficient, and does not optimize energy conservation.
There are solutions in the prior art to differentiate the type of loads connected to an electrical network. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,094,034, entitled “Detecting Actuation of Electrical Devices Using Electrical Noise Over a Power line,” discloses apparatus and methods for detecting electrical device actuation using electrical noise over a power line.